Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski has revealed that a single executive put Babylon 5 on the back burner… but now they’ve retired, the “floodgates opened”.
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I watched B5 on its first run and in syndication. I’ve never watched it end-to-end. Regardless, it’s a pretty amazing story arc that feels like it’s on a galactic scale. That one petty individual has stood between us and more B5 is infuriating yet not surprising.
Remember, most folks who achieve that level of power have a high probability of being whatever we call sociopaths these days.
It’s crazy that a single person put this on hold. I wonder what his grudge with the show was? It’s a really well done show. I only watched it in the past year or two and I really loved it. I binged it pretty hard and needed a little break. I’ll jump back in soon to finish it.
I read his book Becoming Superman a couple years ago and from what I remember from that and the internet forum stories back when the show was on air it basically came down to a WB executive that was also part of PTEN, a WB spinoff channel, that started the grudge based off of some internal corporate situation and just never let go of it.
As a counterpoint to other comments here, I didn’t like Babylon 5. I gave up in the first season on the episode about religions, where each alien race shows a single religion but then humanity shows an enormous number of them.
Showing planets in sci fi as homogenous is a common trope, but such a simplistic take. This resonated poorly with me as I felt the aliens all behaved exactly like humans as well, to the point where you have stand-ins for Jehovah’s witnesses. That episode cemented for me the feeling I had when watching. Babylon 5 is racist against aliens.
Not trying to argue against your opinion whatsoever, but I would say it’s a show that grows by leaps after the first season. The story is much more intricate than you think it’s going to be at the beginning, the actors get better, the writing (IMO) gets better, and there are some very long running arcs.
I do understand your point – somewhat more superficially there’s this whole thing with Garibaldi and a motorcyle and it’s just like this cringe low-rent Bruce Willis thing he’s got going on and I can’t believe it’s even written into the show. That’s also S1 I believe.
But, it really turned around and turned out to be moving and fantastic story-wise. It’s absolutely worth “another shot” if you are ever so inclined.
I might try jumping in again on season 2, thanks.
I agree, but to be honest if you drop everything because of that then you will miss like 95% of Sci-Fi content, which may be otherwise very good despite this flaw (such as Babylon 5). It is simply in almost every Sci-Fi piece with aliens (there are very few exceptions and most of them are one-shot novels, not tv shows).
Watched B5 in around 2010 and it’s easily one of the best series ever created.
Having one guy refusing breath more life into the series is absurd but not unheard-of. Didn’t Doctor Who face similar problems when it ended in late 1980s? It took them almost 20 years to bring the series back…